Assateague Island, Virginia, is known for its population of wild horses, which every year are rounded up and brought across the channel to Chincoteague Island, where some are auctioned off to keep the numbers under control. But in order to get there, they have to swim, so the Chincoteague Wild Pony Swim enlists the help of the Coast Guard to keep the horses safe. Several 24-foot Special Purpose Craft-Shallow Water boat crews from Station Chincoteague maintained a safety perimeter from other boats and people as they swam the channel, with thousands of spectators looking on Wednesday. The tradition dates back…
Five-inch guns, crew-served weapons, Go-Pro small boat ops, MH-60 and fighter flybys: all set to dramatic music. The cruiser Normandy wants the folks back home to know they’ve got things covered in the Gulf. The video, posted on the command’s Facebook page, offers a glimpse into Navy life while deployed to the Middle East, minus the seemingly endless freshwater wash-downs. The ship is deployed with the Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group and is slated to return this fall. The Normandy will left Norfolk this Spring escorting the carrier Theodore Roosevelt to San Diego by way of the Middle East. Then the cruiser will continue on through…
Neil Armstrong with the American Flag on the moon on July 20, 1969. (Credit: NASA)
The spacesuit worn by distinguished naval aviator and famed astronaut Neil Armstrong during the first moon landing is in rough shape, and the National Air and Space Museum is asking the public for help. The museum launched a Kickstarter campaign, seeking to raise $500,000 to fully restore and create a 3-D digital scan of the suit for display and to create replicas in the future. NASA says the suit is being preserved but shouldn’t be displayed until its refurbished, hence the fundraiser. “You may be surprised to learn that spacesuits are among the most fragile artifacts in the Museum’s collection,” the website…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQmllwTKtqU In the Coast Guard, they say, ‘You gotta go out.’ But they don’t say you gotta come back in. Fifty years ago, two oil tankers were ripped apart by an terrifying blizzard off the coast of Massachusetts, but most of the men on board survived thanks to the crew of a 36″ Coast Guard life boat. This winter Disney will release “The Finest Hours,” based on the 1952 rescue of the SS Fort Mercer and SS Pendleton by Coasties from Lifeboat Station Chatham on the south coast of Cape Cod. The movie stars Chris Pine as Boatswain’s Mate 1st Class…
A movie about one of the great maritime disasters of World War II had a little disaster of its own. A WWII-era Navy sea plane broke up during shooting for an upcoming movie about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis near the end of WWII. A PBY aircraft used to stage the rescue of survivors was being used for the shoot started leaking as it was floating on the surface of the water, said Elizabeth Wolfe, spokeswoman for the film “USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage.” The film crew had to evacuate the plane for safety reasons. The crew attempted to…
Well, it’s certainly not a service offered at the ship’s barber shop. Eager to maintain the command’s high grooming standards during its stay in Brisbane, Australia, sailors flocked to a local barber shop where the hair dressers were a tad under-dressed. Jasmine Robson, owner and director of Barber Babes in downtown Brisbane, opened the topless hair cuttery in 2013 as part of her adult entertainment complex Grosvenor on George. When the aircraft carrier George Washington visited in 2013, her business was inundated with sailors looking for a haircut with a view, and she wasn’t prepared. “When the last carrier visited,…
Eric Dane isn’t a SWO. He just plays one on TV. But his late father, William Melvin, was an aviation boatswain’s mate in the Vietnam War era. To honor his service, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus presented Dane with a shadow box of his awards June 12 at the season 2 premiere “The Last Ship” in Washington, D.C., attended by sailors in the area. On the show, Dane plays Cmdr. Tom Chandler, skipper of the destroyer Nathan James and more or less humanity’s last hope of survival against an apocalyptic virus. “I’m here because I love Washington, I love the Navy and…
The Navy and Marines, along with Finnish, Swedish and British forces stormed Sweden’s beach with a big amphibious landing near Ravlunda. The huge show of force for the blue-green NATO team, shown in the sweet 4-minute video above, was part of the ongoing BALTOPS exercise, an annual military training event put on by NATO. This year’s BALTOPS comes amid heavy tensions with Russia over its incursions into eastern Ukraine and its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Over the weekend, Polish officials announced that the U.S. Army was getting ready to move heavy weaponry to Poland, though it did not specify what kinds of weapons…
For Navy Times, the allegations that CNO nominee Adm. John Richardson and Rear Adm. Joseph Tofalo, head of the Pentagon’s Undersea Warfare shop, violated the 1913 Anti-Lobbying Act triggered a crash-course in arcane lobbying rules that almost everybody in Washington has seemingly figured out how to circumvent. The Project on Government Oversight, the watchdog group that threw the penalty flag on Richardson, claimed the admirals were coordinating a grassroots campaign to fund the $80 billion Ohio-class submarine replacement program. Richardson implored the crowd at October’s meeting of the Naval Submarine League to tell everyone from the local parent-teacher association to their congressman…
Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford began testing the ship’s new electromagnetic aircraft launch system in Virginia’s James River on June 5, but before they can launch real aircraft, they have to practice. It’s not quite like a real, live flight deck, but it’s close. Gone are the cargo pants, brightly colored turtlenecks and helmets. Instead, a sailor in blueberries and a hard hat mimics the signals of a deck handler before the catapult launches a weight sled out over the river in a graceful swan dive. The slow motion impact with the water at the end is rather dramatic. EMALS testing began June 5, the latest step…
